APPENDIX I. NEBRASKA DATA, 1877. 
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■voracious appetites, and the damage done was confined only to narrow strips of wheat. 
We were visited by them time and again, sometimes from the south, sometimes from 
the north, once destroying the oat crop, another time the com crop, hut have never, 
as yet, seriously injured the wheat crop. 
Question 1. In 1876, wind northwest, fresh breeze. The first swarm arrived here 
August 15, 4 o'clock p. m. 
1 b. Clear, warm, with occasional flying dark clouds. The swarms were seen for 
three hours in the distance ; mistaken by some for banks of clouds. 
1 c. Covering a breadth of 30 miles ; from northwest ; dense enough to darken the 
sun perceptibly ; 500 feet in depth. 
Question 2. In 187(5 ; on every dry day ; when the wind was favorable, from the north- 
west or west; for some ten days ; swarms were leaving each day to the south and south- 
east, others arriving from the west and northwest, and for two weeks longer deposited 
their eggs, leaving as soon as the work was completed. Those which are hatched in 
the north have uniformly gone to the southeast, while the eggs which were deposited 
when hatched as uniformly move in the direction the parents came from. The Calop- 
tenus spretus has such a spread of gauzy wings that it can neither fly when the air is 
damp nor against the wind ; it rises only when the dew is off, 10 to 1»1 a. m., 4 to 5 p. 
m., and with no wind move about five miles an hour, or faster with the breeze, and 
high or low as the air is more or less dry, and highest at noon. 
Quostion 3. The eggs in 1877 hatched very uneven, owing, as is supposed, from be- 
ing deposited in more varied soils ; most of the eggs hatched between the 10th and 
20th April. 
Question 5. From the 10th to the 30th of April. 
Question 6. One-third. First, because of mild winter weather. Moisture is the only 
condition that will spoil the eggs; cold will not do it, neither before nor after develop- 
ment has begun. Second, because it is claimed, and correctly too, that some of the eggs 
were hatched last fall ; have seen eggs hatched two or three years ago in the middle 
of August that were dropped about three weeks before, but the young 'hoppers so 
hatched were not nearly as numerous as their parents were. 
Question 7. Dry, sandy, naked, hard, or compact soil, in the sod of new breakings 
and on roadsides; it is on or near these places where the damage is now committed 
and where the insects are now congregated in flocks of untold millions, •nhile there 
are also large spaces of prairie and cultivated spots intersecting where there is not a 
grasshopper to be found. 
Question 9. An average of 50 days after hatching, being about June 25 to 30, as for- 
merly. 
Question 10. A period of not less than ten days will elapse after full wings are grown, 
to all appearance, before they will actually marshal their hosts; which will bring it, 
as in 1867 and 1874, to the last days in June, and before which there is no hope of 1 leing 
rid of them in this locality. 
Question 11. Up to May 13; about one-sixth of wheat and one-third of gardens. 
Question 12. Wheat and gardens. 
Question 13. All small grain. 
Question 14. Last year there was none but corn, flax, potatoes, tobacco, and late 
gardens in 1875 ; they came from the south in August, about the 1st, again, injuringthe 
corn crop most. 
Question 15. Those hatched here invariably go northwest; they go in no definite 
direction before their wings are of full length, and then spend some ten days in exer- 
cising their muscle in short flights, increasing from ten feet to twenty rods. In damp 
weather and nights they huddle and lie still on clods, weeds, trees, corn and wheat 
stalks. 
Question 16. A few have been burning them by stringing out straw, and in cool 
nights, when they seek the straw for shelter, it is set on fire, leaving the ground cov- 
ered with red-burned 'hoppers ; some have bought or made machines or traps, and 
have used them with good success, sufficient to establish the fact that hereafter no 
crops will be destroyed by the young 'hoppers if all will take hold, burn, ditch, and 
catch them ; and last, but not least, protect the birds; also turning under deep the 
eggs on cultivated soil before putting in crops. 
Question 17. None. 
Question 18. The essential features of these machines or traps are: 1st, a platform 
that runs on the ground, on runners or wheels; 2d, a canopy meeting the platform at 
an angle; 3d, a reservoir at the junction of the two, containing water or coal-oil, 
either or both. The 'hoppers jun ping up strike against t he canopy' while the machine 
is in motion and will fall into the reservoir. 
Question 20. About every other year. 
Question 21. Nearly all birds, domestic or wild, limit their work of destroying the in- 
sects by their capacity, such as blackbirds, snowbirds, prairie-chickens; and, finally, 
machines or traps, are capable of saving the crop in the worst grasshopper year if bred 
